Minga Asoyarcocha

Minga Asoyarcocha

Our organization

The Association Yarcocha, ASOYARCOCHA is an associative minga of peasants and indigenous people, we started a process of training and formation since 1980; Initially organizing as Yarcocha Cooperative, in 1996 we changed our legal status to that of Association. We are part of the base organizations of the ADC. Our radius of action is in the village of El Encano, Municipality of Pasto, Department of Nariño.

Our organization intends to implement with rural owner families, bio diverse farms and permanent production to ensure a healthy diet, as well as transform surplus production for fair trade, maintain and recover natural ecosystems to contribute to the establishment of biological corridors and strengthen, through a training process, the management system of the organization and its active groups in which adult men, women, youth and children participate.

Where we are?

The Encano is located 23 kilometers from the municipality of Pasto, at an altitude between 2,800 and 2,900 meters above sea level and a temperature that ranges between 6 and 13ºC. Its main economic activity is the extraction of wood, production of charcoal, monoculture of blackberry, onion, potatoes and flowers, management of dairy cattle and guinea pigs.

In the the Encano District is the Upper Guamués River Basin, whose most known geographical feature is the Laguna de La Cocha. The Upper Basin is located at the intersection of the Andean, Amazonian and Pacific zones, in the eastern system of the orographic system of the Andes. La Cocha, the best preserved lake in the high Andes of Colombia, in April 2000 was declared Wetland of International Importance RAMSAR, with an area of 225,000 hectares, of which 4250 correspond to the water mirror. It has an area of 14 km long and 5.4 km wide, 75 meters deep housing 1554 cubic meters of water.

How are we Organized?

Our Associative Minga is organized into five active groups that correspond to Women, Production, Network of Natural Reserves of La Cocha, Communications and Children and Young People that make up the group of Heirs of the Planet “Los Tucanes”. We all participate according to our tastes and preferences and we are committed to the different activities to be carried out. Each of the groups elected in a General Assembly a person to represent us in a Coordinating Committee, and a person to perform the general coordination, who assumes the legal representation of the Minga for a period of two years.